Dinner is freshly grilled lake fish.  In the morning, back on the ferry and to Medan to catch an afternoon flight to Padang.  (Driving is an option, but it takes at least sixteen hours over terrible roads.)  During the short flight during we cross the equator and enter the southern hemisphere.

Padang is on the west coast of Sumatra, facing the Indian Ocean; about half way down the island.  On September 30th, 2009, a major earthquake flattened much of the city, including all the hotels.  A few small hotels have been built since, able to charge extortionate rates to the international aid bureaucrats who flooded in and stay on &mdash parked in front of ours is a white UN vehicle. (I am sure that the stricken populace was delighted to see reconstruction efforts directed to building hotels for foreigners.)   The hotel prides itself on being strictly Muslim &mdash atop each bed are a prayer rug and a gilt-edged Koran.

The next day we hire a car to take us to Bukittinggi, a highlands resort town a couple of hours distant.   On the way, the driver shows us photos he took right after the earthquake, displaying them on a video screen mounted right below the rear-view mirror (an innovative safety feature, I think). Illustrating how the Southeast Asian brand of Islam is less hard-core, he explains that, as a good Muslim, he is forbidden from drinking alcohol, except for beer.

Bukittinggi has a good local market, a couple of colonial constructions, a sorry zoo, and a WWII Japanese tunnel complex, all of which we visit.  I contribute to the economy by adding a fine specimen to my batik shirt collection along with a distinctive black velvet cap (Sukarno/Suharto style).  Making me to feel like I am still in Jacksonville, the shopkeeper than places my purchase into a Winn-Dixie bag!

People come here to escape the summer here, which isn’t a problem this time of year.  There are lots of hotels undamaged by the quake and we considered staying overnight.  Glad we didn’t because other than hiking the surrounding hills and visiting distant villages there’s nothing to do or see.  Instead, we drive back to Padang and kill the next day walking around checking out the earthquake damage and buying packing materials to ship our totem sticks.  Tourism, scant prior to the temblor, is now nonexistent, 'cepting us.  

Padang has lent its name to a style of restaurant popular all over Indonesia.  Twenty or thirty bowls of unidentifiable food substances are heaped before you; those that you eat, sample, or play with get charged to you, the balance are served to the next victim.  No, thank you.  Instead we opt for fish, so fresh that it looks like it was pulled from the sea minutes ago, grilled to order over charcoal.

That's it for Sumatra.  We split up: my buddy to Bali, Bangkok, and Libya; and me to Vietnam.

 

(Note: pictures are very sparse in the following section.  Details infra.)

I fly back to Kuala Lumpur, where I need to overnight, intentially this time. My only activity of note is a trip to the post office, where it cost me $43 to mail my stick to Florida.  My flight to Hanoi leaves at 6:30 AM, which means I have to take the 3:45 bus to the airport, so it’s early to bed

Vietnam is refreshingly cheap: a deluxe room, nicely decorated and well-quipped, in the old city costs only $25. To ensure my room will be ready, I've arranged for an airport pickup by the hotel.

This is a return engagement: I was in Hanoi in 1997 when the city was celebrating the 25^th anniversary of Operation Linebacker II, the Christmas bombing campaign, or, as they call it, the “Dien Bien Phu of the air.”  Boy, has this place gotten touristy!  Just about every business on my street is a hotel, travel agency, souvenir shop, or some other touristic business.  The temperature is a very pleasant 72: the tourists are dressed like they are on a tropical beach and the local are dressed as if the ice age had returned and glaciers are imminent.

In the sightseeing department I concentrate on the stuff I skipped last time.  First, the History Museum.  Weathered statues and dusty pottery. Well worth a miss.  Luckily, the exhibits lack English captioning so I am able to knock it off in thirty minutes.  The highlight is the "imperial treasures," mostly stuff ginned out in the 19^th and 20th centuries.  Typical of the era, the Vietnamese monarchy was largely a European creation outfitted with regalia from the colonial prop and wardrobe departments.

Nearby is the Museum of the Revolution.  Only for the most hard-core. It tells of the continuous thirty-plus year struggle for liberation from, in succession, the Japanese, French, and America imperialists.  The principal lesson is that history is not kind to the losers: we learn that only good things were done by the victors and only bad things by their opponents.  Some exhibits are so bizarre as to possibly be true: did Ho Chi Minh really carry a flintlock rifle in 1945?  The best item is out in front: his 1950 Zil armored limousine, a gift from Stalin and powered by a 140 hp engine &mdash good for slow motorcades and not much else. The final of many dreary rooms is devoted to "Vietnam on the road to build a rich nation, a strong country, and a just and civilized society."

Finally, the Hanoi Hilton, closed during my prior visit.  It’s the old French prison, now mostly torn down but with a section preserved as a museum.  Almost the entirety is devoted to the suffering of patriots held by the French oppressors, but two rooms are devoted to the "American War."  A précis: American pilots who waged sabotage warfare were arrested and temporarily detained here, where they enjoyed the best living conditions, expert medical care; music, good food, fresh fruits, Red Cross packages, books and exercise.  One would think that only reason the miscreants wanted to leave was homesickness, but, of course, they all came to understand their crimes and appreciate the kind treatment received. Best artifact: an small American flag issued to pilots and printed with requests for assistance and promise of reward in all southeast Asian language except Vietnamese, described as a "begging flag."

I tend to eschew tours, but it’s a cheap and convenient way to travel here.  It’s independent, meaning there is no formal tour group and travelers are grouped together solely for transport and ad hoc activities.  I've booked a two-day trip to Ha Long bay.  You've seen the pictures: tree-covered limestone pinnacles (karsts) jutting out of the water with red-sailed junks cruising among them.  Last time it was so foggy I could hardly see a thing.  My luck is no better this outing.  I think there are only a handful of clear days a year, which is when all the postcard and publicity photos are taken.

Ha Long bay now sees twenty thousand tourists a day.  The distance from Hanoi is not great, but to get there takes three and a half hours. We arrive at the pier along with, it seems, the rest of humanity.   A fleet of passenger junks lies at anchor offshore.  We transfer to ours: it’s not much to look at from the outside, but the ten staterooms inside are spacious and well appointed.

The routine is set: the junk armada, many with sails raised for photographic effect, motors a couple of hours through the bay and among the karsts while lunch is served.  We moor outside a large cave and take a tender to visit it.  It's OK, but not spectacular on the world cave scale.  Then, a bit of kayaking around the bay, followed by swimming for the cold-hardy.

After dinner, there's not much going on.  Along with the rest of the flotilla we remain moored through sunset and sunrise.  As breakfast is served, we begin motoring back towards port.  Lunch is ashore, followed by a return to Hanoi.

That evening I am on the overnight train to Lao Cai, gateway to the northern highlands.   We are met at the station and driven an hour to Sapa, a former French hill station and now tourist central.  It's out of season and freezing cold, but two days before Christmas there are plenty of Europeans here.

Aside from escaping the summer heat of Hanoi, the principal attraction here is visiting the ethnic minorities that populate the surround hills. Our morning activity is trekking — more of a country stroll — to Cat Cat, a Black Hmong village just a couple of miles distant.  At the hotel gate are a gaggle of distintinctly dressed Hmong women waiting to accompany us.  As we set out, one attaches herself to each us and wages "friendly conversation" in the form of a barrage of questions.  Of course, it's all a sales pitch for the souvenirs they are carrying in baskets on their backs. The walk past terraced rice fields would offer great scenery if it weren't raining and foggy.  Also, the crop already has been harvested so the predominant colors are the brown of the earth and the grey of the sky and water.  It's all downhill which is good, for now.  

I suspect that the traditional activities of the village &mdash rice-growing, weaving, etc. &mdash endure solely as a front for tourism and that the real economic engine is selling souvenirs to tourists.  At the bottom are a nice waterfall, more stuff for sale, and the long hike back uphill.  All along the way guys on motorbikes tempt the foot-wearing with offers of taxi service back to town, but I resist.

By afternoon the fog has blanketed the town so thickly that one can't even see across the street, so I don't go anywhere.  I don't need to because lunch and dinner at the hotel are included.  The hotel is not heated (it being a summer resort, I don't think anything is), but a requested extra blanket and a tiny space heater at least give the illusion of a slight improvement over the outside weather.  The staff wear their winter coats indoors.

In the morning, more fog, more rain, and another trek, this time to a Red Dao village.  Total distance about six and a half miles, twice yesterday’s distance.  Very muddy, and I can't see a thing.  Finally, at one scenic point the mist briefly parts to reveal very nice scenery &mdash more terraced rice fields &mdash but not much color.

Lunch is in a village, then we continue on to another, with shopping stops on the way.  A waiting van transports us back to town.  As we drive the skies clear and the great scenery we have been missing unfolds, but just briefly.  When we arrive back at town it is still enveloped in fog.

[Not my images]

Most people return to Hanoi by the overnight train.  I stay on another night with a different plan.

The morning brings blue skies and clear weather until the fog returns around 10 AM.  At noon I return to Lao Cai but instead of going to the train station I get dropped off at the border.  Lao Cai is one of two major border crossings into China.

I like entering a country on foot.  You clear the departure area, walk across a bridge or no man's land, then present yourself at the other side.  The white man's privilege lets me skip the lengthy queues of locals; I am probably the only big-nose they have seen all day if not all week. With a smile they wave me through and I step out onto the streets of Hekou, Yunnan Province, China.

The bus station is just a couple a blocks away.  There is a direct bus to Kunming, the provincial capital, but I've already been and it's exactly the wrong direction from that I need to be heading.  The next bus to Nanning, in the right direction, isn't until the following day so I board a bus to Mengzi (pronounced “Mun-zoo”) two hours up the new Kunming highway.  The road is an impressive feat of engineering, a series of aerials spans and tunnels over and through the once almost impenetrable mountains of southern Yunnan.

In Mengzi I grab a sleeper bus to Nanning.  Chinese sleeper buses have actual horizontal berths and I am sure are quite comfortable if you are 4'10” or under.  I have survived them twice and manage to do so once more.  Twelve hours later, at eight AM, we arrive in Nanning.  It's a medium-sized city by Chinese standards, six million, but I already know there nothing really to see and it cold and raining so I decide to keep moving.  But first I need some more money.  To my surprise, the ATM in the bus station rejects my card.  So do the next seventeen or so I try.  I have to hike a considerable distance to find an ATM that accepts foreign cards.  Serendipitously, along the route I encounter a railway ticket office and am able to purchase, using my perfect, non-existent Chinese, a soft-sleeper berth for the direct Guilin to Shenzhen train two days hence.  So Guilin is where I am heading.

Back to the bus station. Departures to Guilin are every ten minutes; the ride is five hours.

Guilin is the starting point for cruises down the Li River through a forest of karsts, a landbound version of Ha Long bay.  Last time in these parts I skipped Guilin and stayed in Yangshuo, the village that is the terminus for the riverboat trips.  During that visit weather failed to cooperate, and most of the scenery stayed obscured by the haze and mist.  Tomorrow’s forecast is for sunny skies.

[Not my images]

The riverboat trade is a government monopoly, so the only way to do it to book a tour and pay extortionate rates (the day trip is about the same cost as the two day Ha Long trip that includes a private cabin on a deluxe boat).  Foreign tourists are piled in to a triple-decker, the largest type of boat, for the four-hour ride to Yangshuo. Conditions are good, but not perfect: although clear, there is the urban haze that characterizes modern China.  Also, it’s cold, so I spend much of the time inside, darting out now and then for photos. 

As one would expect in a culture bereft of cable TV, the Chinese managed to see all sorts of fanciful imagery in these peaks and named them accordingly: e.g.The Wakening Frog, Nine Dragons Playing With Water, Frog Crossing the River, Miller At Work, Tortoise Climbing Up The Hill, Lion Watching the Nine Horses, Camel Crossing the River, etc.

In Yangshuo I am astonished at the changes ten years have wrought.  Last time there were only backpacker guesthouses and cafes.  Boat passengers would disembark, walk past a few souvenir shops, then board their buses back to Guilin.  Now, Yangshuo receives fifteen million visitors year, and has grown to match.  The street from the river is now pedestrianzed and completely given over to tourism.  There are zillions of hotels, large and small, countless restaurants (including McDonalds), and major thoroughfares lined with stores of every sort.  The surrounding scenery is still very nice, though.

I am dropped off about 6:30 PM and walk a few yards to buy some breakfast pastry.  On the way back, I feel a slight tug on my shoulder bag.  I reach down to grab it, and it is empty!  No one is nearby or fleeing.  A master pickpocket has sidled up to me, taken the two items I had just placed inside at the top of the bag, scooped out the camera nestled in the bottom (with dangling shoulder strap), and disappeared unnoticed.  All on an uncrowded sidewalk within twenty yards of my hotel!

That's why I don't carry an expensive camera.  But it held my photos.  Fortunately, I had switched memory cards after Sumatra, so it is Vietnam and today's pictures that are lost (except for a few taken with my pocket camera).  I take minor consolation that there is little I could have done to prevent the crime short of soldering the camera to my chest.  Well, I've been pretty lucky in life thus far; I hope this doesn't signal a permanent reversal.

I still have a day to kill.  Most lists of “things to see/do in Guilin begin with the Li River cruise and rapidly fade from there.  The city is surrounded by karsts.  One smack in the middle is called Solitary Beauty Peak.  China classifies tourism sights from A to AAAAA and prices admission accordingly.  This one is rated AAAA and costs a whopping ten bucks to enter.  Even accounting for grade inflation, it's overrated.  You can climb to the top, where there is a temple and viewing platform.  They make a big deal that prior to liberation, i.e.,pre-commie days, ordinary people weren't allowed in or up.  I think if the bad old rulers had realized they could get ten bucks a pop, they would have reconsidered.

The sleeper train to Shenzhen is a sleek, plush tourist special, which explains why the ticket was so pricey ($67).  We pull into a very modern train station that, after immigration control (Chinese need permits to visit Hong Kong and foreign visitors coming from Hong Kong need visas to enter China proper) connects to the Hong Kong metro system.  The city — just farmland a few years — is the showpiece of modern China: wide streets, tall, shiny buildings, clean efficient subway, and shopping, shopping, and more shopping (and no political dissent).  For Chinese holidaymakers unable to visit Hong Kong Disneyland, there are several large theme parks.  I am here solely for transit, but do get a kick out of the design of my hotel room: the shower is a clear glass cylinder smack in the middle of the room.

My plan was to take the ferry that goes straight from Shenzen to Hong Kong airport, located on Lantau Island just opposite Shenzhen.  The ferry ride only takes thirty minutes, but I learn that the dock is an hour drive from my hotel.  Instead, I opt for a limo ride (actually a plush SUV) direct from my hotel to the airport.  Just before the bridge to Hong Kong, we transfer to a similar vehicle with right-hand drive as Hong Kong apparently doesn’t allow Chinese vehicles (left-hand drive) to enter.   At the transfer station one can check luggage and get a boarding pass, but Delta is not one of the participating airlines.   We also enjoy executive treatment at customs and immigration — we don’t even have to leave the vehicle or haul out our luggage.

Hong Kong airport is one of the world’s best, and the fourteen-hour non-stop flight to Detroit in a 777 about as tolerable as it gets in coach.  Three flights later (remember, I’m still working on mileage-building) and I am home.

 

Trip date: December 2010